Lighten up, folks:
Since I went out every single night this week, and I really did go out every single night this week, I had a whole endless post about theater and all the wild intellectual stuff that came up while watching these brilliant assorted productions, but I wrote it on Medium instead of here because —everyone knows this—there was an earthquake in NYC this week!
Yes, a California-style natural disaster happened on the East Coast. The kind where nothing much gets broken, a few chairs overturned, everyone laughs and says “at least it wasn’t the big one” while trembling internally and reaching for a second cup of coffee.
The real damage is inside us all, because now we know that there was a small one and therefore, that threat of a “big one” is real.
That said, the effect of this particular rumble was merely to interrupt a really good conversation on a Zoom. The tremors began while I was hosting a Pen Parentis accountability group. We were discussing productivity and the guy who lives in Brooklyn interrupts the conversation with: “hey did you guys feel that? Is that an earthquake?” and simultaneously I realized that there are no subway lines that shake my building in Manhattan as if a subway were running beneath the building, meanwhile my body hearkened back to the only other earthquake I have ever felt, a 2.1 or so that happened years ago during which my body likewise hearkened back to a plane hitting a building and shaking me out of bed, and that time I thought it was a construction explosion until the news told me it had been a mild earthquake, but this time I knew immediately that Brooklyn was right, it was an earthquake, and so I said, “Yeah, I think it is. It totally is!” and Upper West Side and Queens said “What? We don’t feel it” and then a second later changed their answers to “whoa! I totally feel it. Do you feel it? I totally feel it. That’s an earthquake” and meanwhile my glassware is clinking together like glassware does in movies when there is an earthquake and the whole thing feels like you’re sitting in an overactive massage chair, only it isn’t just the chair that’s rumbling, buzzing and shaking, no, it’s the entire building and land for as far as you can see. And you just sit there (or stand there, but I was sitting) wondering if it is going to stop before or after your building collapses.
And then it is over and you can’t believe it happened, except your sternum is still buzzing with the fear-tremors you felt when you weren’t sure it was ever going to stop.
And then in my case, another few seconds later, the woman Zooming in from Litchfield CT said “oh wow. I feel it too you guys! It’s an earthquake! I feel it!” and we all marveled at the fact that we felt the wave sequentially.
And then we realized that this meant we had empirically proved the wave nature of an earthquake, which was something astonishing.
And that led to each of us wanting even more connection - everyone went quickly on Social Media (we all did - except Queens, who had lived in LA and instead jumped on Google to see if there were any news stories. Instead of news he discovered some old disaster novels set in NYC that are likely about to sell some more copies)…
We tried to get back to the literary conversation we had been having, but all we could talk about was what we had just experienced, so we ended the Zoom early and all went to find more people to share our experience with.
And I wonder now why we are all so good at seeking other people when there is a disaster but not in between time. Why is it so much easier to reach out for companionship when you are afraid, than when you are full of longing for joy? Other humans are far more likely to be able to fulfill your need for joy than to assuage your fear. And yet, here we are.
Writing News:
I went to so many shows I can’t possibly write about them all here. I wrote about them all on one long Medium post. Here’s a free link to get you past the firewall. The shows were: 12 Angry Men, Brooklyn Laundry, The Ally, Cabaret, and The Extinctionist.
Wrote a poem about subways. Worked on some grants. Things are percolating.
All this theater is helping.
You can still get your own copy of my book and take photos of it in the wild. I’ll post my favorites! Grab the book here.
And in other fine fine news this early Sunday morning, my good friend Laima Vince is going to publish a new academic book with Peter Lang Publishers in 2025. This book has the working title, Back Onto the Map: Conversations About Connection, Heritage, and Writing, and will include her long interview with me from Vilnius Review as well as an essay very dear to my Lithuanian heart that went out of print years ago, “JF Will Never Read This.” I love seeing things resurrect like this!
Which brings me to….
Random Final Thought:
If a global religion can be founded around the idea of a dude coming back from the dead, walking around for a couple of days like a zombie, letting people satisfy their curiosity that it’s really him (but, tellingly, not informing them what it is like to actually die) and then turning into a ghost for the rest of eternity (whose sole purpose is to instill ethics and keep people company) why is there not a whole genre of realistic literature about friendly zombies and friendly ghosts? We have Casper - but he’s out of style now. Romantic undead is not the same thing. Movies like Ghost and Twilight use the fear/horror to make the romantic lead imperfect - using the fact that the natural thing to think of the undead is horror and dread. While in reality, most people I know who believe they have encountered legitimate ghosts are rather fascinated by the notion.